Luck O' the Irish Megaways Slot – Free Demo

A 16,807-way grid in a green field

English studio Blueprint Gaming take a turn for the familiar in Luck O' the Irish Megaways. The Megaways engine here is licensed from Big Time Gaming. As the name implies, players take a journey across the sea to the verdant fields of Ireland, and those who are a little queasy have nothing to fret about, since the developer has gone with an amiable cartoon method to carry the slot and the entire mood is more postcard than fable. The count of ways above the grid is the one number on the screen that changes every spin. The game itself is less orthodox. There is no bonus round in it, and no scatter and no trigger condition of any kind. It comprises a 5 reel, 16,807-ways layout with ample classic symbols to take on.

Blueprint Gaming has founded the game loosely around the ancient notion of Irish luck. Payouts are multiplied by the stake, and all winning combinations on a spin are added together. That notion has surfaced in a heap of songs, tales, and slots. A win is matching symbols on adjacent reels, and the height of each reel does not matter to it. Set as it is in the meadows, the appearance of the game is rather recognizable, so it's familiar ground though.

Pot of gold at five times the stake

Blueprint Gaming has crafted Luck O' the Irish in the style of a jolly storybook. The Fortune Spins button sits on the left of the reels throughout, on the standard game as much as in the mode itself. Like, truly jolly, as though they'd worked out how to inject nothing but colour into it, and it comes across as more welcoming than you might imagine, despite the backdrop's differing shades of green, gold, and blue. The appearance is a lot like the tourist placards, where everything is a hillside, while the reels sit in the middle and the adornments frame them on either side.

In the middle of the scene is the Megaways game grid with up to 16,807 ways to win. Reaching that number takes all five reels showing 7 symbols at once. Each of the five reels is able to display up to 7 symbols in view, and now I get a burst of colour from its large vivid symbols, creating a pleasant contrast against the greenery. The count is printed above the grid on every spin, and mine read 1,280 on one and 576 on another at the same 5.00 bet. When it comes to symbols, it is chiefly gems with ample gold thrown in for good measure, and low pays include the 10, J, Q, K, and A, while high pays are the green, blue, and red gems, with the pot of gold as the most valuable. The pot of gold pays 5 times the stake for five of a kind. Combinations of three or more of a kind are feasible with values spanning from 0.1x to 5 times the stake. The bottom of that range is three 10s, Js or Qs, at a tenth of the stake. All wins pay adjacent.

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The Luck O' the Irish symbol reveals something else

Special symbols are significant in Luck O' the Irish with one sort cropping up, and it is the Luck O' the Irish symbol. It is not a paying symbol on the paytable in its own right. The paytable states that all of them in view uncover a random symbol, for more ways to win, and that is the entirety of what the panel says it does.

What Fortune Play charges to change the reel sets

Next up is Fortune Play. It is a paid mode, not a bonus round. It is a mode the player can shift into at any time with the Fortune Play button, at 20x the total bet, and it activates extra reel sets and a special Luck O' the Irish symbol which can transfer to other reel sets. Running four reel sets at once, the Fortune Spins screen states that special symbols transfer to following reel sets, and the Fortune Bet can be altered at the end of each spin. Blueprint Gaming's other titles include Luck O' The Irish Fortune Spins, which carries the mode in its name, and Bar-X Safecracker Megaways, another Megaways cabinet. The Standard Play button returns to the standard reels. Standard play runs at an RTP of 95.00%, so the 20x price is set against a one-point move in that figure. Fortune Spins operate at an RTP of 96.00%.

Minty’s Final Note: The base game is the entire product here, and the only switch on the screen is a paid one: Fortune Play at 20x the total bet, moving the RTP from 95.00% to 96.00%. My 260 spins never touched it, and the standard reels gave back 707.50 of the 1,300.00 they took.

Nothing to wait for on the standard reels

Luck O' the Irish Megaways is quite a lively game to play, despite the well-worn theme, and what makes it so is the sheer count of ways, as well as the reel heights changing under them. Across my 260 spins the base game was all there was to play. It certainly makes a pleasant change to visit somewhere sunny, even if that means being sold a postcard. Actually, the more you think about it, the barer the game gets, and it appears the entire thing rests on the base game, since there is no feature round at all.

The gameplay is fast-paced, and straightforward, with additional depth supplied by Fortune Play's extra reel sets. Those sets pass special symbols on to the ones that follow them, which is the only carry-over anywhere in the game.

The Luck O' the Irish symbol carries the chance of a screen of random symbols on the cards should they all surface. The max win potential of up to 50,000 times the stake is the ceiling on any single game.

What 260 spins did to a 1,000 balance

Over 260 spins at a stake of 5.00 I wagered 1,300.00 and won back 707.50, a return of 54.4%. The stake stayed at 5.00 for the whole run. The best the balance managed was the 1,000.00 it opened on, and the worst was 407.50, with only 55 spins paying anything at all, 27 of those for less than the stake. Spin 27 and spin 202 both paid 49.00, at 9.8 times the stake. The best of the lot was 260.00 on spin 110, 52 times the stake. The balance stood at 927.50 after it, and nothing else in the session cleared ten times the stake. There was a run of 22 spins without a solitary win ending on spin 191. For the most part, however, payouts were quite dispiriting and the math model quite merciless, and overall, Luck O' the Irish Megaways is a jolly slot with a recognizable theme albeit a bit too tight for my liking.